American cartoonist John Caldwell began his career doing campaign posters for a classmate. He studied at the Parsons School of Design in Manhattan, and worked as a cartographer at the state Department of Transportation before turning to cartooning and advertising art. His cartoons, with their spindly-headed humanoids, frequently appeared in National Lampoon, Playboy, The New Yorker, Mad Magazine, The Wall Street Journal and Barron's. He also produced a newspaper panel cartoon called 'Caldwell', which ran from 1985 to 1989. He lived in upstate New York, where he passed away from pancreatic cancer at the age of 69 in February 2016.